Safety effects of parking maneuvers

Parking maneuvers, particularly a vehicle’s maneuver for entering and leaving a parking space, have varying rates of use and safety impacts. In this effort, crash data were collected for parking lots in the vicinity of a university campus and compared to observational parking position data. The campus was selected for this study because a change in the parking enforcement process was expected to (and did) change parking maneuver choices. When entering and leaving a parking space, three maneuver options exist for drivers: (1) forward, (2) reverse, and (3) pulling through an adjacent parking space. When specifically entering a parking space, the maneuver options become: (1) pull-in, (2) back-in, and (3) pull-through. When leaving the parking space, the maneuver options become: (1) pull-out, (2) back-out, and (3) pull-through. This study found that the pull-in/back-out vehicle maneuver’s percentage of total crashes was greater than the percentage of vehicles that were actually observed to use the same maneuver. The analysis from this study implies that the pull-in/back-out parking maneuver is more likely to result in a collision and therefore, is associated with a higher crash risk. Further analysis of North Carolina’s parking related fatal and serious injury crashes found that vehicles backing out of parking spaces was overwhelmingly the main cause for these serious injuries. 90% of North Carolina’s parking related fatal and serious injuries occurred during a back-out maneuver. Overall, this study concludes that the back-in/pull-out parking maneuver is safer than the pull-in/back-out maneuver and is the recommended approach to 90° parking.     

At the Nexus of cinema,city and memory: Resisting the demolition of Istanbul's historical Emek movie theatre

Emek was the oldest surviving movie theatre in Istanbul when it was demolished in 2013 so that a shopping mall could be built in its place, spawning a persistent civic resistance. Sitting at the juxtaposition of the vibrant literatures on urban studies, film studies, and memory studies, the article demonstrates that emotions, evoked by memories, have a part in triggering urban resistance, adding to the flourishing literature on how emotions inspire and sustain activism. Specifically, it provides ethnographic evidence for the presence of a positive link between place attachment and willingness to engage in place-protective behaviour, stressing the role played by memories in this regard. Focusing on a historical movie theatre, on the other hand, also reveals the complex spatiality of cinematic experience, stressing the importance of social relations and vicinity of the theatre (the street in particular) in this specific context. A final set of contributions derived from the case of Emek relates to the notions of “failure” and “sustainability of activism” given that the resistance to Emek's demolition is characterised by its resilience and persistence as well as a determination to “resist to forget”, despite the failure, practices of emotional reflexivity playing a key role in this respect.     

Behavioural analysis of interactions between pedestrians and vehicles in street designs with elements of shared space

This paper describes the development and implementation of qualitative behavioural criteria in order to analyse the conduct of pedestrians and vehicles when they are required to interact with each other, with particular interest to street designs with elements of shared space. The new behavioural analysis technique is developed by identifying the fundamental principles that underpin existing traffic analyses, such as traffic conflicts techniques, and adapting those to a qualitative framework that describes the mindset and rationale of road users. The technique is then applied to a case study in London, using video data from periods before and after the redevelopment of the Exhibition Road site from a conventional dual carriageway to a modern design with some elements of shared space. With the main goals being to assess the pedestrians’ confidence and the vehicles’ tolerance/patience when forced to interact with each other, behavioural trends are related to instantaneous characteristics of the vehicle flow (vehicle approach speed and traffic density). The data produced are used to develop and validate qualitative behavioural relationships for pedestrian–vehicle interactions, as well as location-specific conclusions for the Exhibition Road site.     

The conditioned anticipation of people (CAP) model of driving in urban spaces

Despite significant gains in overall collision rates, pedestrian and bicycle safety in complete street environments remains an on-going challenge. However, urban areas with the most risk exposure for pedestrians continue to maintain lower incident rates than their suburban counterparts (“Dangerous by Design” 2021). Under most driving circumstances, the over-rehearsed nature of driving leads to a psychological state similar to self-hypnosis, where attention is subconsciously maintained on the driving task while metacognitive awareness is minimized or eliminated. This state continues until some type of conflict, uncertainty, and/or novel stimulus is presented. The primary difference in driver attention in urban environments is postulated to result from the Conditioned Anticipation of People (CAP). Based on the human neurological predisposition to recognize and fixate on human faces and figures, we hypothesize that in areas where drivers have been conditioned to expect human presence, low-level metacognition is preemptively re-engaged to address their presence, resulting in higher attentional resource expenditure and increased distraction management. Such conditioning may be generated by contextual features common to pedestrian-friendly environments but, necessarily, must be reinforced over time by the Actual Presence of People (APP). CAP driver engagement is limited by the perceptual abilities of the driver such that at higher speeds or within wider corridors, the presence of pedestrians is more difficult to perceive. This results in a non-CAP attention pattern, exhibiting minimal metacognitive activity, high levels of automaticity, and reduced attention. This model was generated based on the observation that vulnerable user presence and the roadway contextual features that support the driver's ability to see vulnerable users were related to attention data measured during the SHRP2 Naturalistic Driving Study. Visually discernable features that were associated with vulnerable user presence had relationships with attention and large effect sizes (η² > 0.5). Contextual features that had relationships with vulnerable user presence, but minimal visual impact or interfered with the driver’s ability to see vulnerable users had no relationship to driver attention. This behavioral pattern provides supportive evidence for the proposed model.     

The prefigurative politics of place-making: Analysis of a neighbourhood-based campaign for a social centre

This article analyses the production of meaning embedded in places through prefigurative practices. Although the use of space by activist groups is widely studied in the sociology of social movements and urban geography, this article extends the body of literature on place-making by analysing the prefigurative dimension between militant practices and living spaces. Drawing on walking interviews with Montreal's activists that campaigned for a social centre in Canada, this article argues that the strategies inform place-making of local grassroots mobilisations that aimed to develop urban alternatives, and that the meaning attributed to places depends on the individual and collective experience of activists engaging in prefigurative politics. In this sense, place-making derives from the lived collective experience therein and the individual's treatment of these spaces. The results show that the repetition of the action, as well as its emotional and symbolic intensity, are factors that favour the contribution of prefigurative practices to the place-making process.     

Hoody,goody or buddy? How travel mode affects social perceptions in urban neighbourhoods

When travelling through a new environment people can and do make very quick judgements about the local conditions. This paper explores the idea that such judgements are affected by the travel mode they use. We hypothesise that drivers generate a more superficial impression of the things they observe than those who walk because they are exposed to less information. This prediction is based on social psychological research that demonstrates that information that becomes available in “thin slices” affects superficial judgements. A survey study (n = 644) demonstrated that perceptions of a less affluent area are indeed negatively related to more driving and positively related to more walking, but only for those who do not live there. Perceptions of a neighbouring affluent area are positively related to more driving. Two experimental studies (n = 245 and n = 91) demonstrated that explicit (but not implicit) attitudes towards a group of young people in an ambiguous social situation are more negative when they are viewed from the perspective of a car user in particular in relation to a pedestrian perspective. These findings suggest that mode use may affect communities by influencing social judgements.     

Profile of urban vs rural drivers detected drink driving via Roadside Breath Testing (RBT) in Queensland,Australia, between 2000 and 2011

ProblemIn Australia, as in many other countries, a disproportionate number of drink driving crashes occur on rural roads.Aims and methodThe study used Queensland Police Random Breath Testing (RBT) data from 2000–2011 to (a) comparing drink driving rates and RBT efficacy in areas of increasing remoteness (b) compare drink driver factors and the circumstances of apprehensions in rural and urban areas.ResultsGenerally, rural areas had a higher detection rate per RBT intercepts and a greater number of apprehensions per licensed drivers than the state average. Main effects showed that rural drivers were more likely to be male and to be a reoffender but less likely to be apprehended between midnight and 5.59 am and after visiting a licensed venue. Urban drivers were more likely to be aged 17–49 years and to be apprehended with a BAC < 0.15%.ConclusionDifferences in RBT effectiveness and drink driving factors and circumstances exist between rural and urban areas.Practical applicationThe greater number of drink drivers in rural areas signal a need for targeted interventions in these areas. To increase the effectiveness of such interventions, further research should examine the mechanisms responsible for these observed differences between rural and urban drink driver.     

Collaboration with Urban Community Stakeholders: Refining Paraprofessional‐led Services to Promote Positive Parenting

This paper describes the process of a community–academic partnership to navigate implementation challenges for a school‐based service model led by paraprofessionals to promote positive parenting in high poverty urban communities. We describe the process by which we (a) identified implementation challenges, (b) sustained a university–community collaboration to redesign the paraprofessional service model, and (c) assessed the feasibility of the new model involving four social service agencies in 16 schools with over 600 families. The structure and process of the collaboration and refinement are described with attention to who was best positioned to engage in the collaboration and how the partnership worked to balance scientific rigor with responsiveness to paraprofessional workforce strengths. Feasibility data indicated that the revised model was successfully implemented by paraprofessional staff; 92.2% of possible staff monthly reports were completed and discussion of key goals was incorporated into 94.2% of interactions. Continual monitoring provided critical feedback from stakeholders as we drew on and interpreted these various sources of information to build and refine the service model. We suggest that these processes are critical steps to bridge the research‐to‐practice gap, by promoting practices that are aligned with the needs of children and families, and the staff who serve them.     

Cars,Aesthetics and Urban Development

The aim of this presentation is, first, to examine the role of aesthetics in creating the experiential effects of the attractions of Autostadt at Wolfsburg in Lower Saxony in Germany. Secondly, Autostadt will be seen in a perspective of urban and regional development which will include a reference to how Volkswagen AG has contributed to the development of the city of Dresden in Saxony by launching a production of luxury limousines at the centre of the city. In conclusion, the experiential design applied in both cases will be evaluated and put in perspective of urban environmental development.